**Poem: "Happy Birthday, America!**

Last night, during a live streamed reading at the Green Kill Gallery here in Kingston, New York, I pulled one of my favorite tricks on myself. I left the second page of the poem I'd planned to read last at home, somewhere in the piles of creation that are my life. I promised to post it here, to prove that it really exists:

Happy Birthday, America

There is no pencil big enough to rewrite the history we have committed

these two past centuries and change.

In school, we anointed rich, white men that

mailed their demands to the rich, white King

while the first huddled masses fought the fight,

while bought-and-paid-for Africans tended crops,

cleaned their toileted mansions, suckled their young

of various races to preserve the lily-white bosoms

of their women, birds of another feather in

their gilded antebellum cages.

There are no fireworks glorious enough

to soothe the nerves of a soldier who’s endured

the real thing, or a dog who can’t distinguish

in her faithful brain the difference

between good and bad gunfire.

The Constitution never stopped a back alley beating

of a woman whose perfume didn’t match her crotch.

The Constitution never cleared things up with a cop

pulling over a black man just for driving

a car above his station.

Hot dogs and hamberders this Fourth of July,

socially distanced testimonials,

Hamilton rapping for those with the right connections,

another imperfect Father.

I saw his wife Eliza’s wedding ring in a museum,

where all matters Colonial belong.

Tenuous sliver of gold, tiny as her busy fingers were,

she wore it long after his honorable death,

rewrote and revised his history, her pencil big enough

to remember the good, make way for better

The Wages of Moonlight: A Bio of Sorts, An Upcoming Reading

Here's my take on the stale, old "artist's" questions I was asked to provide answers to for my upcoming livestream from the Green Kill Gallery in Kingston, NY, August 12 at 8:00 pm:

The Wages of Moonlight

I first saw myself around the age of four. We lived in the first floor of a house in Wyandanch. There was a broken-down pavilion in the yard that we were warned to stay away from. I drank the last drops of soda syrup from bottles waiting by the back door to be returned. 

I am compelled to recall the past in fits and starts. Like those drips of soda syrup, the past returns with some effort, and little welcome. 

The artist who comes back to me again and again these days is Anna Held. A brief flash in the early 1900s, her star was polished by Ziegfeld, but she was the one who shone. A powerful Jewish refugee who adopted the persona of a Parisian coquette, she died at 46 of a rare disorder we still have no cure for. 

I am supported by those ancient stars, paid to excess by the moon and her fickle appearances. Support comes first from within. If there is any applause about, enjoy it for what it is—the current phase of consent. 

In the last few months, convention as we know it has been upended. I long to return to that broken-down pavilion of the past, stepping carefully around floorboards that will bear no weight. I long for the trumpet vines and moonflowers that surely by now have created the only roof it ever needed. I long for the sweetness of soda syrup, dappled with impurities, from bottles beside the tin milk box. I long for the milkman and his shiny white slacks. 

Upon waking, I immediately miss the moon, no matter her demeanor of the night before. I rush to the bathroom, and am not ashamed of it. Any who pretend otherwise are invoking a false narrative. 

Art is a sign of society. Without it we are beasts, tearing our masks off in a crowded Walmart, lengthening the stay of immoral diseases by kisses of black dust. 

The act of creation offers me clarity, not intoxication. I am reassured that I am still connected to the segment of humanity that has both feet in the dirt and eyes in the stars.

To preregister, here's the link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/live-stream-august-12-8-pmmike-jurkovic-guy-reed-cheryl-a-rice-tickets-115417299249. I'll be reading with Guy Reed and Mike Jurkovic. The take will be split between the poets and the venue.

The “Job” of a Poet In Times of Crisis

So many look to our ancient scribes and modern wordsmiths (or “wordsmythes”, as my Beloved calls us) for comfort and reassurance in trying times. I remember listening to NPR on September 11, 2001 and hearing Billy Collins on the air, clearly unprepared for an event such as he was asked to comment thoughtfully and artfully on at a moment’s notice. When racism rears its ugly head on a seemingly daily basis, quotes from Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King speckle the interwebs. I don’t find much comfort in their words, despite their idyllic messages of hope and peace, especially since both, and so many more seeking the same, met violent ends. 

Change is like birth. Neither is accomplished without some bloodshed. The future progress of America won’t lie in the hands of poets and songwriters, nor should it. If people are inspired to go out and do the things, make the sacrifices that will be required, that’s fine. But thinking that a song will change the world all by itself is falling far short of the necessary steps. Rally cries, soundtracks can motivate, but they can’t compel, nor should they be required to do so. 

The landscapes of poets is as wide-ranging as the number of folks who label themselves poets. Some write to forget. Others, to remember. Some put pretty words together and live or die on the praise that follows. Some craft abstractions that may hold meaning for a precious few, but escape the understanding, and often the attention, of the masses. The masses have gradually been excluded from the enjoyment of poetry anyway, as schools spend more time sustaining the lives of students at the expense of their emotional survival. 

It interests me to note how art continued thru wars, depressions, political upheavals, and natural disasters over the centuries. The Germans continued to be born, fall in love, paint, and write even in the darkest days of Hitler’s reign. These brutal humans, in the big picture, always end up being a blip on the radar of humanity’s long existence. This doesn’t mean people don’t die in the meantime. People will always die, it’s safe to say. But there is a bigger picture. Humanity survives. Good does eventually win out, despite the cost. And unless subsequent generations are taught the lessons, made to believe that the lessons are real, evil will repeat itself. And the artists will continue to record it all. 

Maybe the history books should consist of poems and paintings. Maybe each page should play the songs of an era, all points of view. Art seems to get closest to the ideas in discussion. I have resisted for a long time including the horror of COVID-19 in my poems. I was unwilling to afford it the dignity of a poem, draw any more attention to it than the illnesses and deaths it has left in its wake already have. But I can’t always select what my poems will be about. In fact, I can rarely write these days without very personal motivation. I am still horrified by wearing a mask, and consider it a necessary tragedy of our everyday lives now. Yet, I wrote a poem about them. I have an old friend who died early on, slipping into an induced coma before we all knew what was happening. I know he’ll make an appearance at some point, but I can’t predict when. Others I know who’ve survived will no doubt incorporate their experiences into future work, in their way. 

It can’t be an artist’s job to lead, follow, or assist in the spread of propaganda. I believe it was former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove who described her role as that of a witness. We are powerful witnesses indeed, and when all the bodies on all sides have been shed from their electrical selves, when time passes and brings us to the next big medium, it is the art that will tell the stories of people. It will be the art that remains, our voices in the future wilderness.